Alyssa Ridder

Alyssa Ridder is a freelance costume designer and doctoral researcher at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. She has previously held academic positions in costume design and technology at Metropolitan State University of Denver in Colorado and George Fox University in Oregon. Alyssa holds an M.F.A. in costume design from The Pennsylvania State University.

With over 15 years of experience designing and building costumes for theatres across the United States, Alyssa’s work centers on fostering togetherness among non-traditional audiences. She is an advocate for ethical design practices and is recognized for her leadership in blending digital tools with traditional costume techniques to create more accessible and sustainable workflows. She offers education in the digital pattern drafting software CLO to clients around the world.

Within CiF, Alyssa’s research investigates agency and meaning-making through digital costume design in extended reality (XR) performance. Her costume-led research project aims to create new knowledge on empathy and performance creation through the field of costume while furthering the development of digital costume design as its own discipline.